A Sentimental Education

 by Gustave Flaubert

A book made interesting by its historical setting and the key events in the 1840's in France as it passed from monarchy to republic. The plot is limited, following the life of the main character, Frédéric Moreau. He is generally annoying but is in love with the wife of a man called Arnoux who is modelled on a real life character. His character drawing is good and some of Frederic's friends are at times funny, monstrous or to be pitied. I never felt any of this for our hero. 7/10

Liberty Bar

 by Georges Simenon

Off on his travels again, Maigret is in Cannes and Antibes on the cote d'Azur. A man has been murdered. He is a foreigner but has lived in France for sometime and was a hero of the resistance. He appears to have fallen on hard times but there is more to it than that. Very enjoyable! 8/10

The madman of Bergerac

 by Georges Simenon

Maigret gets shot while on his way to the Dordogne for a holiday. 

He has to solve the case from his convalescent bed. Good policing mystery. 8/10

The death of Francis Bacon

by Max Porter 

A very short book telling the story of Francis Bacon's death through his supposed thoughts on 6 canvasses. I felt all through that I was close to seeing what Bacon and the author were grappling for but failed on both accounts. Maybe I needed to know more about Bacon or maybe.......5/10

Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

A story about robots set sometime in the not too distant future would not normally be my chosen reading but I did enjoy this. It uses the robot Klara to examine what love is and what is human and a playful examination of religious belief. As you would expect all really well written with a bittersweet and almost inevitable ending, 8/10

The Pickwick Papers

 by Charles Dickens

In many ways a collection of stories but weaved together in a humorous way by the members of the club and Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's manservant. This is one of Dickens's funniest books with a whole host of amusing and sometimes unbelievable characters. Too long some would say, and they may have a point, but hugely enjoyable as a source of escapism 9/10

The Crimean War

 by Orlando Figes

This was a fantastic book. It manages to bring together official and unofficial accounts from all sides in a major conflict and put them in the context of European history at the time, and all in a highly engaging manner. 10/10

Between two millstones

 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This book took me by surprise. Firstly, by how vitriolic he was toward those he felt had let him down and secondly how right wing his views seem from the standpoint of the twenty first century.
What the book captures really well is how oppressive Western democracy/capitalism can be albeit in a different way to soviet communism. An interesting but long winded book. 6/10

No one is talking about this

 by Patricia Lockwood

What to make of this book? First of all I needed an urban slang dictionary next to me to understand some of the language. Then, I ended the book in tears. The writing is fresh and engaging although some of the metaphors took some stretching of the imagination to work. 
In the end it seemed to be an internet meets reality type of book and the writing about reality in part two wins hands down. 8/10

Desert

 by JMG Le Clezio
This book is beautiful.
It follows a young woman called Lalla alongside the march of people in 1910 from South Sudan to Morocco where they were slaughtered by colonial forces. The echos of this event seem to haunt the book. There is a chapter where Lalla is walking through Marseilles after leaving her aunt which is mesmerising. The use of language-even in translation- is  wonderful. 9/10

Review of 2020

 Definitely a year for fiction. On the non-fiction side I finished a biography of Marx and read a damning analysis of the big tech firms called Surveillance Capital. Also a good biography of Clement Atlee. He led the Labour party for 20 years including as PM after the second world war and yet I knew hardly anything about him so very enjoyable.
On the fiction side it has been a crime laden year including all five Jackson Brodie books by Kate Atkinson.
The Booker prize was disappointing with my favourites not making the shortlist (Apeirogon and Redhead by the side of the road). The shortlist was full of misery and angst so much so that I could not bring myself to read the eventual winner Shuggie Bain, until after the result had been announced.
The final part of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet was released and was fun. It even managed to squeeze a covid reference in.
My favourite book of the year must go to The way we live now by Trollope. Amusing and insightful in equal measure. Roll on 2021.

Big Sky

 by Kate Atkinson

The fifth in the Jackson Brodie series and still full of wit amongst the darkness of a trafficking ring in Bridlington as well as a number of other incidents. It is all the other stuff that makes this book the weakest of the series, as the surrounding noise makes the story hard to follow and I found myself having to frequently go back over the story to work out who was being referred to. The question is, will we see Mr B again? 6/10

Nordic Fauna

 Andrea Lundgren

A book of six short stories published by Peirene.

A mixed bag. I particularly liked the other -wordliness of how things come to seem  and the bird that cries in the night. The others left me a bit cold. 5/10

The Sextine Chapel

 by Herve Le Tellier

This author won the prix goncourt prize this year. He is also a member of the French oulipo group and this book is an example of how they work, writing stories around patterns. So in this book each short story is about two people having sex but they work through the alphabet, so story one starts with Anna and Ben, story two is Ben and Chloe etc. When they have got through the alphabet the characters start turning up again with different partners. All very humorous. 7/10

Started Early, took my dog

by Kate Atkinson

Jackson Brodie at it again in a caper, almost in the style of the keystone cops where the good guys are kidnapping children and stealing dogs all against the background of Leeds and a crime committed 30 years before. She does seem to be able to tread this narrow line between humour and ugly drama. 7/10

The Magician's Wife

 by Brian Moore
Set in second empire France and the recently invaded Algeria this is a fascinating tale of a magician/inventor called upon to use his skills to help the empire, and of his wife. She in many ways sits outside the story and observes but she gradually becomes the story itself. I thought this was a great book set in a period of history I love 9/10

When will there be good news?

 by Kate Atkinson

The third in the series featuring Jackson Brodie and carrying the expected balance of humour, drama and intrigue to make it hard to put down. We also find out more about what happens to all the money Jackson inherited at the end of the first in the series. 8/10

Shuggie Bain

 by Douglas Stuart

The winner of this year's booker prize and something I had put off reading because of the subject matter.

Shuggie is growing up in Glasgow with his alcoholic mother and this is the story of their life together up until the point she dies. This is not letting out a secret as we find out this fact in the first few pages of the book. Despite the inevitable sadness of this book it sparkles with life and occasional humour. I enjoyed it far more than I expected and think it a worthy winner from the shortlist. It maybe got a little bit long in the last third of the book . 8/10 

Inhuman Resources

 by Pierre Lemaitre

A great dig at big corporates and a thriller which is implausible in parts but still tense until the last 30 pages which were a bit disappointing. 7/10

Still Midnight

 by Denise Mina

First novel featuring Alex Morrow. Enjoyable and at times great writing. Will definitely read more 8/10

Summer

 by Ali Smith

Final novel in the quartet and keeps up the current references including covid. It brings back characters from the other novels and is a really good read. Why didn't it make the Booker list? 8/10

Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

I found this a very hard read.
It started well enough in a lab developing nematodes but this is only the background to  the story of a black man in a postgraduate school that is predominately white. He is also gay and a victim of child abuse. The gay sex was difficult but what I really struggled with was the violence of all his encounters. The writing is good but this was not my type of story. As such it may well win the Booker this year 6/10

Don't Turn Out the Lights

 by Bernard Minier

The third novel in the Inspector Servaz series and Hirtman only made a fleeting appearance. This one was all about dodgy French astronauts with some twists in the tail. Good page turner 7/10

The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

I may have enjoyed this more if I had known a bit more about Ethiopian history beforehand. As it was, I did get drawn into this story about the Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia in the late thirties. The story revolves around a woman called Hirut and a soldier called Ettore who becomes the photographer of a sadistic general. Hirut becomes a resistance fighter and ends up a prisoner photographed by Ettore. I found the characters a bit flat and difficult to relate to but by the end I was desperate to know how they all ended up. The shadow king of the title is a character in the resistance army who posed as the emperor to rally the ethiopians. 6/10 

Such a Fun Age

 by Kiley Reid

This book has an adorable toddler in it whose voice is caught brilliantly on the audibook I listened to.
The start of this book left me wishing it to end. It felt like what I imagine chick-lit to be and I was not enjoying it. The story unfolds around an incident in a food mall when a black woman baby sitter is held by a security guard for kidnapping a white child she is babysitting. 

It develops into an interesting and toward the end absorbing reflection on attitudes to race and identification. Look out for that Mrs Chamberlain!! 7/10

Apeirogon

 by Colum McCann

This book left me flummoxed even while I enjoyed it enormously.

It is the story of two men, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both who lost a daughter in the conflict between the two countries and both of whom are committed to peace and an end to the occupation of the west bank.
The unusual thing about the book is that it is about two real people, still living and yet this is not biography or politics or history but a novel. We know this because the subtitle says that it is a novel. But is it? In an author's note we are told that apart from some interview notes in the centre of the book, McCann has been given freedom to go where he wants. He does and produces a great book in the process 9/10

Burnt Sugar

 by Avni Doshi

The story is a mother and daughter story set in urban india. The mother is starting to suffer from dementia and everyone around is supportive and sympathetic. For the main protagonist this is not so simple. Every incident in the present takes her and us back to an episode in the past and a childhood / growing up that was not always good and times very  painful. The structure I liked but I never settled into the story and found the characters difficult to engage with. A great idea that did not work for me 5/10

Love and other thought experiments

 by Sophie Ward

An amazing book that is full of inventiveness. I found myself losing the thread and then picking it up again when I was on the verge of defeat. It will stay with me for a while because of the raw energy of the writing.
The last two chapters let it down for me but I wish I could be half as creative as this. 7/10

This Mournable Body

 by Tsitsi Dangarembga

This book is the third of a trilogy, a fact I only learned after reading the book.

This maybe why I struggled to come into land with it. Set in Zimbabwe the main character Tambu suffers from depression and clearly has a backstory which I presume is fleshed out in the earlier novels. Without that she is difficult to understand and the story becomes a set of cameos of Tambu at various places in life.

It is written in the second person and I am not sure that works. If I find time I would come back and read the earlier novels. 5/10

Redhead by the side of the road

 by Anne Tyler

A short book about Micah Mortimer.
Nothing much happens apart from a teenager turning up claiming to be Micah's son and Michah's girlfriend dumping him but this was a great book with characters drawn really well and that you wanted to engage with. 8/10

Citizen Clem

 by John Bew

This is a very readable biography of Clement Atlee.

He covers his life from childhood and makes a point of starting each chapter with a piece of poetry linked to the period in his life he is covering. He refers a lot to correspondence with his brother Tom who he was very close to. This despite the fact they had very opposing views on war and pacifism which must of dominated their lives in their early twenties and middle age when Atlee was deputy prime minister. I would have liked to see this explored in a bit more detail. However, that aside, I thought this was a very good insight into the life of a very private person, whom duty(?) drove to become prime minister of the UK and leader of the labour party for 20 years. This idea of duty and loyalty to country reminded me of DeGaulle and his sense of destiny. 9/10

Madame Bovary

by Gustave Flaubert

It was a long time ago I read this book and this time I listened as an audiobook.

I love the character descriptions and the chemist is almost Dickensian in his caricatured awfulness.

However, Emma is dreadful and impossible to have sympathy with given her overwhelming selfishness. She is the ultimate in anti-heroine, femme fatale. How would she fare in the twenty first century where she could indulge her whims without society's condemnation. Sadly, I think she would fare badly. It would always be somebody elses fault that she was unhappy.

If Emma is a character you love to hate her husband Charles is worse. How can he have no idea what is going on? He is either totally self obsessed or totally stupid. I like to think he was away in the countryside having a torrid affair of his own but that makes the end of the book a little more difficult to explain. Also why does he give up his finances so easily.

One last question. What happened to all the creditors baying for blood just before Emma's final act?

A great character study but a frustrating novel 7/10

The good, the bad and the little bit stupid

by Marina Lewycka

A crazy story about a couple who fall out on referendum night, their lovers and their children and about what happens when the husband wins (or think he wins) the Latvian lottery. A crazy caper across Europe follows. This is a light train or holiday read and funny at times. Not my favourite this year. 5/10

There is no Outside

Edited by Jessie Kindig et al

A collection of despatches from around the world regarding covid 19. Fascinating take on the global pandemic and changing views across the world in a small snatch of time 7/10

The Mirror and the Light

by Hilary Mantel

The third book in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy and a very long one! The writing is wonderful as you would expect and the characters are wonderful and of course fictional. Do we know more about the real historical figures. Probably not, but then who do we really know. Dominic Cummings may have an endearing side to him but we would never know it. Maybe, in four hundred years time somebody will write a sympathetic novel about his rise to power. Lets hope not. The book was I felt too long by two hundred pages or so but I expect it will still make the Booker shortlist and it was still a good read 8/10

The Way we Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

A fantastic slice of late 19th century life, with great characters and scattered with a dry humour throughout. The book does highlight how prevalent anti-semitism was in England at this time and makes for some uncomfortable reading in places. 

The rise of unscrupulous businessmen, a largely useless and penniless aristocracy and lawyers with ridiculous names makes you think that the book could be set in the present day. 9/10

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff
This book is very hard to summarise in what is effectively my book list but it will stay with me for a long time.
On the negative side it probably labours its point by being a bit too long and having Google and Facebook as target number one without widening that out too much may put some people off, However, that aside this is a masterpiece. The laying bear of what the tech companies are about is relentless and breathtaking in its scope. In 1996 I thought google was the best thing I had ever seen. That naivety now lays in ruins.
The compare and contrast with totalitarianism is  excellent and the third section on where do we go from here was scary and very thought provoking. I would urge anybody interested in technology and/or the future of our society to read this book 9/10

You Would Have Missed Me

by Birgit Vanderbeke
Another moving story by the author of the Mussel Feast.
This story is told by a seven year old east german who on the face of it wants a kitten for her birthday but it soon gets darker than that. The ending was problematic for me but the tension through this short narrative and the humour were great 7/10

A Song for Drowned Souls

by Bernard Minier
The second novel featuring the French detective Martin Servaz and his colleagues.
This is again set in the Pyrenees and features Martin's nemesis, Julian Hirtman. What I like about this is the way Hirtman is a presence throughout the novel but not anything to do with the murder that is central to the plot. Lots of dead ends before the killer is unearthed but a great page turning read 7/10

One Good Turn

by Kate Atkinson
Another Jackson Brodie novel. This one is set in Edinburgh and Jackson has moved on. He now lives in France and has retired from his private detective business. He is in Edinburgh with one of the characters from the last novel but things are not going well. However, he witnesses a road rage incident one morning and is quickly drawn into the drama of the novel. I have to say this is a bit like Ian Rankin meets the keystone kops! However, it just about holds together and their is a lovely little twist at the end. 7/10

Actress

by Ann Enright
There is something about this book that is glorious. I cannot put my finger on what it is exactly but the way characters unfold and draw you into their lives is wonderful. The actress of the title is shown to us by her daughter and it is a wonderful tale of love in an almost any town, any family setting-apart from the shooting perhaps. 8/10

Case Histories

by Kate Atkinson
A crime novel that is normally positioned with literary fiction in the bookshops. This is the first novel to feature Jackson Brodie-a northerner living uncomfortably in Cambridge where he works as a private detective following his time as a policeman and soldier. He is a great character and the cases he works are knitted together perfectly but not necessarily solved. There is comedy and almost Dickensian caricature in places. Loved it 8/10

German Requiem

by Phillip Kerr
The third novel in the Bernie Gunther series. A private detective in post war Berlin who travels to Vienna on a case that brings him into contact with ex SS officers and other unsavoury characters. Did not enjoy as much as the previous two. 6/10

The Frozen Dead

by Bernard Minier
A French crime thriller set in a village in South West france close to the Spanish border.
A high profile horse killing leads to the investigation of a cold case. There are lots of twists and turns on the way. Look forward to the next in the series 9/10

The Picture of Dorian Grey

by Oscar Wilde
A spooky tale about a man who retains his youth while his portrait grows old. A vehicle for Wilde to include an overload of witticisms that became boring very quickly. Did not enjoy 4/10

The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau

by Graeme Macrae Burnet
This is supposedly a translation of a book by a forgotten French author called Brunet who wrote the book. The fact that this may be a tall tale is only revealed(or hinted at) by a lengthy translator's note at the end of the book in which we learn the author's life bears a remarkable resemblance to the main character.
The book is a crime novel where a waitress goes missing and suspicion falls on a non-descript bank manager who lives a very mundane life in a town close to Strasbourg. However, his life becomes by successive surprises more and more interesting. The book grew on me the longer it went on and I liked the ending. 8/10

American Dirt

by Jeanine Cummins
The story of a mother and son as they try to escape Mexico following the slaughter of 16 members of their family by a drug cartel. The story tells the tale of migrants heading North. It is harrowing in places and relentless in terms of pressure of the plot progression. I felt this was a well told story and would class is at one of the best reads so far this year.
The author has been castigated for writing this story because she is not Mexican and not a migrant. I have never heard such horseshit in my life. (Well actually I have, but to make a point etc lalala). This is a novel. The author spent 4 years researching and is married to somebody who was undocumented until their marriage. Yes, it may not be 100% reality and flaws can be found I am sure, but it is a novel. By definition, not real. If authors have to have lived a situation to write about it the novel will be reduced to memoir and the creativity of some of our great authors is lost. I say well done Jeanine for shining a light on a dreadful mam-made suffering and if it causes us to think about these issues then it has been a force for good. 9/10

A World to Win

by Sven-Eric Liedman
Finally, a year after starting this book I have finished this interesting and informative biography of Karl Marx. I found it heavy going in places but really absorbing in others. It is told chronologically and provides a great introduction to Marx's major thought and writings.
It had a useful but far too short summary of where Marxism has gone since Marx's death. It had the effect of sending me off to check things out elsewhere to try and understand alienation or commodity fetishism etc. Could influence my reading list for a while! 8/10

The Girl who fell from the sky

By Simon Mawer
I loved the Glass room but this book kept threatening to sweep me along in the tension of the plot but then left me feeling that it was running out of steam. The main character, Marion is a genuine complex character who I liked but the characters around her never quite fleshed out. It was a good page turner but the ending was sort of inevitable if not totally believable. 5/10

The Division Bell Mystery

By Ellen Wilkinson
A murder mystery written by one of the first women mp's in the nineteen thirties. Fascinating! 8/10

Confession with Blue Horses

by Sophie Hardach
The story of Ella and her family related to us by Ella herself.
The story moves between 1980's East Berlin and London in 2010 and relates the vents that led to and followed an escape attempt. Great story 8/10

Braised Pork

by An Yu
Set in modern day Beijing this is the story of Jia Jia and what happens to her after she finds her husband dead in the bath(suicide). He has left her a drawing of a fish man and it is this which drives the story along. It was very readable but has a good but somewhat open ending. 8/10

Barnaby Rudge

by Charles Dickens
Set around the historical fact of the Gordon riots of 1780 this is an enjoyable novel.
It tells the story of The Maypole Inn and those living in or around this village pub to the South of London. Barnaby is one of these characters and he gets caught up in the riots and their aftermath. It is witty and sad and as ever great story telling 9/10

Snow, Dog, Foot

by Claudio Morandini
A funny, sad, short book about a mans sinking into loneliness, madness or some indeterminate state high in the mountains of Italy. It can be read at one sitting and made me laugh but also made me think about loneliness and what drives it and what effect it can have on an individual and how it is perceived by others. 8/10

Germinal

by Emile Zola
I last read this book in 2007 and was reading in a relatively new translation,
It is the thirteenth book in the Rougon Macquart series charting second empire France.
This is the story of Etienne Lantier, the son of Gervaise from L'assommoir. It is a heartbreaking story of a family's and community's struggle through a mine strike. As ever the key characters are fleshed out wonderfully and Zola uses the contrast between the Bourgeoisie and the working class to great effect, It was a great read still and ties in very well with my reading around Marx. 9/10

Review of 2019

Have read more non-fiction this year.
Enjoyed Left Bank a lot-a book about the Paris Left bank during and immediately after the second world war. Revolution Francaise was an interesting look at Macrons rise to power.
On the fiction side I have read and really enjoyed the tin drum. Also reread the first two books of Remembrance of things past and Anna Karenina.
The Booker had an interesting list this year. I particularly enjoyed the Elif Shafak and the winner was ok, the Bernardino and not The Testaments, which I was disappointed by. However, my two favourites were Lanny by Max Porter and The man who saw everything by Deborah Levy, neither of which made the shortlist. A mention to for Salman Rushdie's Quichotte a crazy enjoyable retelling of the Cervantes original.
In keeping with the Booker Prize this year I refuse to pick an absolute favourite!

Poor Economics

by Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo
Interesting and thought provoking look at how macro policies work out at the micro level in trying to fix some of the world's fundamental problems. Found the writing style a bit tedious. 6/10

The Man in the Red Coat

by Julian Barnes
Ok so first off, this is a beautifully produced book. The paper is the right thickness, the illustrations are interesting and help draw you in.
The writing is great and you can feel on every page the novelist wanting to get out of this biographers cage that he has placed himself in. Humour spilling over the edges is the result.
The biography of Dr Pozzi-and although I have seen the painting, I confess I did not know who he was-is a wonderful telling of society in the Belle Epoque. Pozzi is one character among many who shines out from the pages. I was amazed at the advances in medicine that took place at the end of the nineteenth century but fear not. This book is not about medicine, it is about characters rich in stories to tell and told in an unusual and brilliant way. 9/10

The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak
Set in Istanbul and America this is a look at the Armenian genocide of 2015 from the standpoint of today through the eyes of Turks, Armenian Turks and Armenians in the diaspora.
It is told through the story of one family over the course of 20 years and with a big secret stuck in the centre of the story throughout. In truth, by half way through we know what the secret is but the tale is well told. I was disappointed with the contrived device of using a medium to inform the current generation of what happened to grandparents but that aside it was an interesting read with engaging characters. 6/10

Faces on the tip of my tongue

by Emmanuelle Pagano
A really interesting book translated from the French in the Peirene press series. It tells the story of a French village from small anecdotal stories that seem unconnected apart from the odd cross reference that gradually makes the whole hang together. No names are used to add to the confusion but the stories are those of any rural setting and beautifully evocative writing 8/10

Steel Boat, Iron Hearts

by Hans Goebeler
This is life aboard a U-boat in the second world war as seen through the eyes of a crewman aboard U-505. It is a candid tale of life on board and ashore in Lorient and Brest in Brittany. Taken as a tale told with hindsight and the removal of time it is a fascinating history told by the losing side and adds some balance to the standard histories of the period. It was a miserable existence in my view but won that Herr Goebeler had immense pride in and his insistence that he was motivated by love of his homeland like most sailors the world over has a ring of truth to it. The relentless bombing of the allies on French civilian towns is as equally abhorrent as the german bombing of London and Plymouth and other cities. It was an interesting read 8/10

The Man who saw everything

by Deborah Levy
I would not recommend Deborah Levy for the pulsating plot line. What I enjoy so much is her writing and the way a story is borne along on the language and beauty of the style.
This book is about Saul Adler who gets hit by a car on the iconic Abbey Road zebra crossing in 1988 and again seemingly in 2016. Once before the Iron curtain fell and once as Britain voted to leave the EU. But this is an unreliable narrator and we slip about in time and many things are not what they seem. What a man remembers is not always truth. I really enjoyed this book and cannot understand why it did not make the shortlist. 9/10

Grand Union

by Zadie Smith
A book of short stories that was a mixed bag as all such collections are I suppose. There were a few that I really enjoyed, Parents morning epiphany, Miss Adele amongst the corsets, Kelso deconstructed, and For the King remain in the memory. Not a great fan of short stories as a type but this was ok. 6/10

This Poison Will Remain

by Fred Vargas
Commissioner Adamsberg gets called back from Iceland to solve a case in the first few pages of this book but then gets sidetracked into examining a case of poisoning by spider bite. With its normal twists and turns and eccentricities of the team this was another enjoyable read, albeit the crimes uncovered were horrific. 8/10

The Testaments

by Margaret Attwood
The last of the five Booker shortlisted novels I am reading. I did get 150 pages into Ducks, Newburyport but found it too in love with the art of novelty than with storytelling.
This was a good follow up to the Handmaids Tale but not as good as its predecessor. The story is told through three characters. One of these, Aunt Lydia, was a key character in the first novel but we get to hear her side of the story. The other two narrators are new but it soon becomes clear they have links to the previous book. The first part of the book was good but the later part had elements of an Enid Blyton adventure which seemed out of keeping. Still a good read 8/10
I know while typing this that this book won the Booker Prize last night jointly with Girl, Woman, Other. Given Lanny had already been eliminated I can't argue with that decision.

Girl, Woman, Other

by Bernardine Evaristo
I did not like the format of this book. It is 12 short stories about black women/trans living mostly in the UK but they all have a link to each other somehow.
This grew on me as the book unfolded and I got caught up in the working out of these lives across different time periods. 7/10

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood
This famous post apocalyptic novel has a sequel 30+ something years later. I wanted to read this before I read the Booker listed sequel. It is fairly grim stuff but totally engaging. What was going to happen to our heroine at the end of the book as she stepped in to the van? Can't wait to find out 9/10

Quichotte

by Salman Rushdie
Magical, funny, topical, this was a really good book as long as you are prepared to suspend reality.
The story revolves around a man in America addicted to TV, who falls in love with a TV talk show host, who like him hails from India.
He takes on the name of Quichotte and invents a son for himself called Sancho who materialises into reality (for a while at least).
However, the story of Quichotte runs alongside the story of the author, one Sam Duchamp who also has a son. Confusing it is at times but you have to marvel at the imagination who can dream up this stuff. 9/10

An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma
This book is different in that it is narrated by a chi-the guardian spirit that is joined to a human from birth. It tells the story of Nonso, a chicken farmer in Nigeria. He saves a woman from jumping off a bridge and eventually they become lovers. In trying to win the approval of her parents he goes off to Cyprus to get a degree. This turns out to be a scam and he ends up imprisoned for a crime he did not commit.
The language of the book is great but to be honest I found it really bleak and devoid of hope. I did not like it. 5/10

Lanny

by Max Porter
I did not expect to enjoy this book but I loved it. Lanny is a young boy living with his parents in a commuter village in the home counties. He also seems to be in rouch with dead papa toothwart, who can and does take the form of all sorts of things in the surroundings of the village.
When Lanny goes missing the blame focuses on a local artist, as the outsider, the not like us. It is a great fable for our time and written in a challenging yet engaging style. A potential winner of the Booker prize? Would that be that bold? 9/10

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

by Elif Shafak
On the face of it this does not offer a promising premise.
A prostitute is found dead in a waste bin in Istanbul. The 10 minutes 38 seconds of the title refers to the time from when her heart stopped beating to when her brain died.
However, Leila uses that time to tell us her life story and introduce us to her five dearest friends. The latter part of the book takes us on a slapstick journey of how these friends demonstrate their friendship and also how important friendship is. In danger of getting a little twee toward the end I really enjoyed this book and hope it makes the Booker shortlist 9/10

Within a Budding Grove

by Marcel Proust
The second book in the Remebrance of things Past septology(?) on Audible.
This book takes our narrator and us to Balbec where we meet Elstir the painter, and Albertine and her gang of friends. I love the description and his understanding of the human condition but it has to be said-and I know it is sacrilege-but he does go on a bit at times! 8/10

Frankissstein

by Jeanette Winterson
As you can guess by the title this has echoes of Frankenstein throughout.
The book starts with Mary Shelley in Italy where she first gets the idea for her famous book. Switch abruptly to a tech show in Memphis for adult toys and robots and enter Ron Lord. He is a very funny character and if Dickens was alive now I can imagine him conjuring up such a character along with his soon to be partner Claire, Enter also Ry Shelley, a doctor who is trans and used to be called Mary. Enter also Victor Stein a very intelligent academic in the field of AI who falls in love with Ry-or does he?
As well as being funny in places it is also a book that provokes you to think about what it means to be human as well as gender patterns.
The end was not perfect, a little too contrived and clunky but a great read none the less. 9/10

Night Boat to Tangier

by Kevin Barry
This book is set in the Spanish port of Algeciras as two middle aged drug dealers from Cork wait in the hope of finding a daughter, Dilly who disappeared three years earlier. It is funny in places, sad and melancholic in others but has a lovely lilting flow to the language that made it a really enjoyable read. 8/10

My sister, the serial killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Set in Lagos what do you do when your sister starts killing people?
This was a good read, presented in a deadpan sort of way we learn how a nurse looks out for her sister and why she reacts to men the way she does. 7/10

The Pale Criminal

by Philip Kerr
Second in the Bernie Gunther series and Bernie is forced to rejoin the police force to solve a crime intricately involved with the politics of the time. A good read for a train journey. 7/10

March Violets

by Philip Kerr
The first novel in a crime series about a detective called Bernie Gunther. Set in pre-war Berlin it is given an added twist by being set alongside the rise of national socialism, A good story 7/10

Machines like Me

by Ian McEwan
Very well written as you would expect.
I am not sure about the device of setting the book in the eighties and playing with political outcomes following the Falklands war, alongside a technology world set some years beyond where we are now. However, the story provokes thought about morals in an AI world and how sentient a being a robot can be. I finished the book quite drained and needed to plug myself, recharge and muse about what it all meant. 8/10

Swann's Way

by Marcel Proust
The first book of Remembrance of things Past which I first read 30 years ago. Listening to it as an audiobook is different but enjoyable, The descriptive passages are faantastic and although they can get drawn out for far too long at times his capturing of human emotion is brilliant 8/10

The confessions of Frannie Langton

by Sara Collins
Frannie is a mulato slave brought up on a sugar plantation in the West Indies. She is involved in some weird experiments her owner is undertaking to try and show that slavery is justified.
The book starts at the Old Bailey where she is on trial for murder. The book is her tale of what happened and how she got to the position she was in. I loved the ending but I think not everyone will. 7/10

Tangerine

by Christine Mangan
Tangiers 1956 and newly married Alice is deeply unhappy and a long way from home. Out of nowhere her best friend from college turns up-a friend she does not want to meet. This book promised a lot and I read it very quickly but somehow it did not quite do it for me. A good train read 6/10

Maigret takes a room

by Georges Simenon
Back in Paris and a really enjoyable novel, as Maigret sets out to find out who shot and wounded one of his detectives. He checks into a boarding house and meets a great array of characters. Oh and along the way he solves the case! 8/10

Spring

by Ali Smith
The third in a quartet looking at the state of Britain today.
I really enjoyed this book with a good balance of anger v humour and some great characters. Particularly liked Paddy and Richard (nickname Doubledick after a Dickens character).
I got a little bit lost at times in the second half of the book but didn't really mind this as I knew the direction we were heading in and that we were unlikely to arrive by the end-which we didn't. Still a great read 8/10

Revolution Francaise

by Sophie Pedder
The author makes clear that she is not writing a biography but she does write about Emmanuel Macron and his dramatic rise to the role of French President.
The whole book is fascinating as it tries to unravel what drives this unusual character and what it is he is trying to achieve. The best parts of the book were in chapters nine and ten examining the deep fractures that divide France and the French education system which is controlled from the centre to the point of stifling good teachers from developing those most in need of it.
Both society and the education system need attention. As I write this the yellow vest protests continue(they had not started when the book was written), and you feel the next 12 months are critical if the Macron presidency is going to deliver any of the hope promised during his election campaign. 9/10

Left Bank

by Agnes Poirier
A very readable portrait of the Paris arts scene during and after the war.
Sartre and de Beauvoir feature a lot but so do Mailer, Koestler and Camus, Saul Bellow and Miles Davis, and a host of others. It paints Paris in such a way as to be attractive, but also realistic about the realities of a post war city and leaves the reader wanting to explore the city and the works of the various people mentioned. 8/10

The Wall

by John Lanchester
A novel set in a post climate disaster world where are narrator is doing his national service on a massive wall that runs all the way around the UK to keep the others out.
At one point our hero tells us nothing much happens on the wall and he is right! Nothing much happens in the novel. The story that is told is told well but there is not a lot to tell. Life is boring, something major happens followed by a period which is dramatic but actually not much happens, the end. 5/10

Journey to a War

by WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood
This is a fascinating book written in 1938 and tells the story of a journey around China at the time of the Sino Japanese war.
The language is politically incorrect at times and their behaviours from a different age, but the writing is superb and the poetry is intoxicating-especially the sonnets. 9/10

The Accordionist

by Fred Vargas
Back with the three evangelists as ex special investigator, Louis Kehlweiler, is asked by an old friend to prove that a young accordionist is not guilty of a string of murders.
Quirky as ever this was a good fun, fast paced crime thriller and very enjoyable. 7/10

The Tin Drum

by Gunter Grass
This is a lodge in your brain type book.
I started reading it because of it's reputation and the fact that it was published in the year I was born. Despite this it is an amazingly fresh and modern book.
It follows the life of Oscar, who narrates the book swapping between the 1st and 3rd person.
He is a surreal character who was born fully developed mentally but stopped growing at the age of three-by his own choice he would have us believe.
It is set largely in Danzig (modern day Gdansk) in the period just before the second world war and takes us through Oscar's experiences and introduces us to a panoply of amazing characters.
Apart from his physical attributes, Oscar is unusual in that he can shatter glass at will with his voice and always has with him his tin drum. His drumming eventually makes him very wealthy but it gets him into and out of a lot of scrapes along the way.
This is one of those books that makes you wonder at the imagination of the author. Although I found it totally bizarre in places and frustrating in others I will relish and as one of those book reading experiences that stays with you long after the last page 9/10

Lullaby

by Leila Slimani
A psychological thriller where we learn from the first page that two children have been killed by their nanny. We spend the rest of the book examining how she got there and the effect she had on the family she worked for. It is well written and keeps a tension throughout but, and for me it was a big but, I don't think we will ever know. Maybe this was the point, as it is echoed by the detective on the case. The frustration of modern fiction. No escape from the real world! 7/10

The Misty Harbour

by George Simenon
Excellent Maigret, set on the Normandy coast it is the tale of a mystery man who turns up in Paris not knowing who he is. The trail leads to the coast and an old love problem. 8/10

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy
It is probably 30 years since I last read this book but I still really enjoyed it.
My love for Levin was tempered on this reread as I found him bloody annoying at times.
As for Anna-I am still not sure. In many ways this is the beauty of the book, its refusal to endorse or condemn the characters. Tolstoy lays them out in full and almost challenges the reader to decide. 9/10

Children of the Cave

by Virve Sammalkorpi
A Finnish novel told in a series of diary entries from a nineteenth century explorer's assistant about a strange group of animals/humans who are discovered living in a cave in the Russian wilderness. It is a compelling read as we gradually find more and more revealed about the children and the group of explorers. 7/10

A Political History of the World

by Jonathan Holslag
In 560 pages this book covers 3,000 years of history around the world so it is always going to be a fairly superficial look. Having said that he does it really well demonstrating the way that war follows peace as certainly as sunshine follows rain. Each chapter covers 250 years and put empires and political powers in a clear context. There were a few points that grated such as using the apocryphal "let them eat cake" when talking about the French revolution, but overall I found it really engaging and interesting. 8/10

Review of 2018

Another varied year dominated mid-year as is becoming traditional-by the Booker prize list. Around this I have read a couple of good biographies-particularly enjoyed the Balzac. On the non fiction side I particularly enjoyed a history of France by John Julius Norwich.
The Booker was won by Milkman, set in Northern Ireland at the time of the troubles. However, my favourites were Washington Black and The Overstory and I would find it difficult to choose between them.
In other fiction I have listened to a couple of Dickens-very enjoyable as ever. Have also read the English Patient which was good but I think my favourite has to be a short novel called The Mussel Feast set at a German meal table.

Love is Blind

by William Boyd
This book set at the end of the nineteenth century is the tale of Brodie Moncur, a Scottish piano tuner. It is peopled with marvellous characters some of whom I would have liked to see and hear more of.
The story follows Brodie all over Europe and beyond and although I felt the story stalled at times I always was interested to find out what happened next. 7/10

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine

by Gail Honeyman
an accounts assistant in Glasgow, with a past, this book is very funny and very sad in equal measure as Eleanor tries to come to terms with the present,
I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was fantastic. One of the most enjoyable reads of the year. 9/10

A tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens
How good to read this tale of the French revolution again. Different to many of Dickens that I have read. Fewer comic characters-although Cruncher and Miss Pross are magnificent and situated largely out of London it is interesting to try and hear Dickens view of the revolution.
You still get his concern for the working classes and the condemnation of the rich but in a very English way he seems wary of the revolution as a means of solving these problems. I guess history has proved him right with clear social divides still in clear view on the streets of Paris. 9/10

The Order of the Day

by Eric Vuillard
This is a recording of history from the second world war that scarily demonstrates how we can get sucked into the most chilling acts by turning a blind eye. How the outworking of evil can sit next to the most banal acts of everday life.
It is short. It is well researched-the farewell luncheon for Ribbentrop in London could have been (and probably was) lifted straight from Churchill's memoirs of the second world war. It is fascinating 8/10

France-A history from Gaul to De Gaulle

by John Julius Norwich
A gallop through French history from 58BC to the end of the second world war.
Although by its very nature this history omits much of the detail it is a very enjoyable and informative read. His personal asides are amusing without ever diluting his clear love for France and its people. 9/10